Marquage-melanome-oeil

Uveal melanoma: refining the diagnosis

04/02/2017
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Knowing which treatment to administer to which patient requires greater knowledge of the development risks specific to each tumor.

Beyond the medical expertise developed, physicians and researchers at Institut Curie have a collection of samples of tumors and metastases associated with clinical data on patients. 

This unique collection has already allowed us to identify three broad patient sub-groups according to their genetic profile and by low, medium and high risk,” adds Prof Nathalie Cassoux, head of the surgical department at Institut Curie. “These genetic data appear in our study as a more relevant factor in the prognosis than the clinical and histological data used until now(2).

These analyses are now offered to all patients to establish a reliable prognosis of the development of their disease, and thus to adjust post-therapeutic follow-up.

For patients identified as having a high risk of recurrence, Dr Sophie Piperno-Neumann is the coordinator of the FOTE ADJ trial promoted by Institut Curie. It is the only phase-III clinical trial underway that assesses whether administration of preventive or adjuvant chemotherapy via Fotemustine – a chemotherapy prescribed before appearance of the signs of tumor spread, in order to reduce this risk – provides an advantage over reinforced monitoring in patients with a high clinical or genomic risk.